Page 74 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

Narrating the self 67
Despite having a clear sense of her self as white and English, Rosemary
did not (cannot?) produce a narrative of her life in which she gave herself
the role of the central subject. In contrast to Deborah, Rosemary presented
herself as largely without agency – she is someone who simply ‘goes with
the flow’. This discourse has an echo of Sally’s account of her former self
as ‘one of those little wish things that just blows through life’. She did not
present herself as making active decisions. Just as the children ‘just sort of
happened’, so leaving school was not a particularly significant event in her
life and she found herself in a particular job by accident:

BB: So, like, getting a job, was that a big event?
Rosemary: No, not really, it was sort of I was at school and I didn’t know
what I wanted to do. I used to be into cameras, like I wanted to
probably do photography [interrupted by baby].
BB: You were talking about how it wasn’t a big . . .?
Rosemary: Yeah, so I was looking for a job. And I wanted to do photogra-
phy, but I weren’t really bothered. It was just like go with the
flow sort of thing. And a few of them went into the insurance
company. And they said ‘why don’t you try for the company?’.
BB: These were friends at school?
Rosemary: Yeah, and I said ‘all right then’. But I loved it. I applied for it,
went for an interview and they sent back and said I’d got in.
But they was all young at the company. It was just like going to
school again, doing your work, they was all the same age, they
was all 16, except the managers of course, but we was all the
same age – must have been about 18 of us – all the starting at
the same age, well, roughly, over a couple of months, starting at
the same time.
(Interview 32)

Rosemary also described herself as taking a passive role in finding a part-
ner. A friend organised a blind date for Rosemary and she went along with it,
eventually going out with and then marrying the man selected for her:

Rosemary: And then one year he said ‘do you want to get engaged’. And I
wasn’t really, I was really like going along with the flow, and I
said ‘well’, and I was still young. He was 6 years older than me.
So I think he must have thought time was getting on [laugh].
BB: How old were you when you got married?
Rosemary: I was 21 I think, 21 and he was 6 years older than me, 26, 27. It
was about a year or so after that. I just went with the flow, ‘oh
all right then, we’ll get married after that’. But I could’ve easily
just left it as it was, you know, I weren’t into rushing into getting
married.
(Interview 32)